.desktop Launchers for Terminal Apps are Broken

[castrojo]

Discussed in #4479

^{Originally posted by ehsanullahjan April 14, 2026}
On Bluefin, I have btop installed via brew, and have ~/.local/share/applications/btop.desktop as follows:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Version=1.0
Name=btop++
GenericName=System Monitor
Comment=Resource monitor that shows usage and stats for processor, memory, disks, network and processes
Icon=btop
Exec=/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin/btop
Terminal=true
Categories=System;Monitor;
Keywords=system;process;task

This used to work as expected, but doesn't work anymore. I see the following in journalctl (similar errors for other .desktop files I have created, including for bundled tools like htop):

Apr 14 11:49:09 systemd[2582]: Started app-gnome-btop-703419.scope - Application launched by gnome-shell.
Apr 14 11:49:09 systemd[2582]: Started app-flatpak-com.github.marhkb.Pods-1660321077.scope.
Apr 14 11:49:09 btop.desktop[703634]: Unknown option -e

The unknown option -e is the error I get consistently for any app with Terminal=true. As a workaround, if I make the following change, it works:

Exec=ptyxis -- /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin/btop
Terminal=false

This seems like a regression. Any thoughts what might have broken this and how to fix it?

I'm on the latest Bluefin:

bluefin-dx:stable
Bluefin (Version: 43.20260414.1)
Linux 6.19.7-200.fc43.x86_64
```</div>

[ehsanullahjan]

Weird, but hopefully helpful, that xdg-terminal-exec is somehow pointing at Pods:

~
❯ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.default-applications.terminal exec
'xdg-terminal-exec'

~
❯ xdg-terminal-exec --print-id
com.github.marhkb.Pods.desktop

~
❯ xdg-terminal-exec --print-cmd
/usr/bin/flatpak
run
--branch=stable
--arch=x86_64
--command=pods
com.github.marhkb.Pods

I'll need to find out how to fix this and also how this got messed up.

[ehsanullahjan]

I can confirm that installing the com.github.marhkb.Pods flatpak sets xdg-terminal-exec to com.github.marhkb.Pods.desktop. Uninstalling Pods restores xdg-terminal-exec back to its default value of org.gnome.Ptyxis.desktop. Once this value is restored, I can launch terminal-based apps (btop, nvtop etc.) successfully.

I gave at least one other flatpak (com.rafaelmardojai.Blanket) a shot to further isolate the error. Installing Blanket did not touch xdg-terminal-exec. It would seem, thus, that there's something peculiar about Pods (last updated 3 weeks ago).

@castrojo would you say that this should be a bug reported to Pods at https://github.com/marhkb/pods?

[ehsanullahjan]

Fix merged @castrojo. This issue can be closed.

marhkb/pods#938